***FAA Model Aircraft Registration Requirement Struck Down!!!!***

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Faster than a speeding faceplant!

In Colorado Springs it is a $250 fine for throwing or flying anything in any park without a permit. I have tried, they don't issue permits to anyone other than for sports league play. If you want to play football in a local park you have to join a league or they won't issue a permit and will fine you $250 for throwing a football in a local park.

This law has been in place since 2005.

It costs $1,500 to start a league in Colorado Springs AND you have to pay for parks and rec umpires for each game. Most of the parks here are empty for most of the day. This isn't about safety and it never was. It is about money and control.

Because of the law, we fly AT the airport. That's where the club is, at the airport. The local airport has had a place for RC aircraft for 50+ years. It is NOT illegal to fly at the airport. It is illegal to fly over 400' at the airport without tower permission.

When I fly at the Pueblo VA, I call the tower and tell them I am flying. It's no trouble and now that they know me, they give me no hassle as they know my copters can't possibly fly the 4 miles to get to the Pueblo airport.

Build cheap, crash cheap

The problem is public perception. Though the registration was, in reality, largely toothless, it provided a facade of regulation and barrier to entry. Public perception is powerful; over the decade, RC flying has been steadily getting banned by municipalities and counties in places where it was previously ok or at least not forbidden. Public perception has the power to cause lawmakers to do things like this for the sake of appearing to address a problem.

This is headline news and the media is misinforming people. People don't want drones (I'll talk about that word too) flying around their homes and families unregulated. The public perception of this case is completely negative; they've seen the idiots making the news flying their camera quads into restricted airspace, around peoples homes, etc, and that's all they've seen; now they're being told it's an unregulated free-for-all. There is a complete lack of barrier to entry with these widely available consumer quads which practically fly themselves, I'm surprised there aren't more newsmaking incidents involving them.

I am against government overreach and feel that the registration was overreach, but the court decision is not going to provide a net benefit to the hobby as a whole. If anything, it will be negative due to public perception.

Speaking of public perception; The word drone. Drone brings to mind killing people in Afghanistan, "collateral damage", scandal and surveillance because that's what people were introduced to the word drone by in the past 15 years, it has a deep seated negative connotation. Using the word drone to describe quads (and now just about any RC aircraft) has had a negative impact on the hobby's reputation.